Mexico Migrant Truck Crash Leaves 53 Dead

MEXICO CITY – At least 53 people were killed and dozens injured in a terrible truck accident in southern Mexico on Thursday, authorities said, with most of the victims believed to be migrants from Central America.

The accident, which occurred in the southern state of Chiapas, happened when a truck with more than 100 people overturned near the capital Tuxtla Gutiérrez on Thursday afternoon, the head of the state civil protection service, Luis Manuel García Moreno, told Milenio TV.

The accident is one of the deadliest migrants has been involved in in decades, following the deaths of 13 migrants in a car crash at the U.S. border in March.

Mr García said the truck was traveling at excessive speed, according to witnesses, and then overturned while driving around a sharp bend, with the trailer with the migrants then crashing into a footbridge and a nearby construction site.

Pictures and videos shared on social media showed more than a dozen bodies covered with white sheets lying in the street near what appeared to be the twisted remains of an overturned vehicle.

The civil protection service announced on Facebook that another 58 people had been injured. The accident occurred on the highway between the city of Chiapa de Corzo and the state capital.

“My solidarity with the victims of the traffic accident,” said the governor of the state, Rutilio Escandón, on Twitter. “I have given instructions to immediately provide help and assistance to the injured. The responsibility is based on the law. “

The state of Chiapas, which borders Guatemala, has seen a flood of migrants from Central America in recent years, many of whom were smuggled through Mexico en route to the US border. In the twelve months leading up to October this year, a record 1.7 million migrants, mostly from Mexico and Central America, were found trying to enter the United States illegally.

Trying to get into the US, whether to seek asylum or seek economic opportunities, is a dangerous and sometimes fatal process as migrants have to travel through cartel-contaminated areas of northern Mexico and often pay high prices to smugglers to get her to the limit.

Migrants are regularly packed in trucks or cars on their way north and are often victims of violence along the way. In January, the bodies of 19 people, most of them migrants, were found in a charred pickup truck near the US border. A group of 12 police officers were later arrested in connection with the crime.

According to the International Organization for Migration, at least 3,575 deaths have been documented on the US-Mexico border since 2014.

“The rising death toll of migrants in the region is extremely alarming,” said Michele Klein-Solomon, IOM regional director for Central, North America and the Caribbean, in a statement on Wednesday.

At least 750 migrants have been killed trying to cross Mexico since 2014, according to the IOM, and thousands more have simply disappeared.

Thursday’s accident came just a day after the United States resumed a controversial migrant enforcement program called Remain in Mexico, which would force asylum seekers to wait across the border while their cases are settled in U.S. courts . The program has been criticized by human rights groups for the unsafe conditions migrants face in Mexico.

“As part of the Remain in Mexico program, the United States and Mexico have knowingly put the lives of thousands of asylum seekers at risk,” said Ari Sawyer, a researcher with Human Rights Watch, in a statement Thursday.